Northern Ham

had almost the same thing happen with mine last fall. ended up being the ends were too close to some metal gutters and it pulled resonance way down. moved the ends out a few feet and it came right back up. might not be your issue but worth checking whats near the end insulators.

RTTY guy here and honestly i still think theres something to be said for modes where you actually type in real time even if the weak signal performance isnt as impressive. but i get it, JS8Call does fill a gap. i messed around with it during a few slow contest weekends and the heartbeat feature is kinda neat where your station just announces itself periodically without you doing anything.
one thing though — make sure your time sync is spot on, like within a second or less. i had all kinds of decoding issues early on and it turned out my PC clock had drifted. probably obvious to most people but it tripped me up for longer than i want to admit

ok so i just upgraded from tech to general last month and im trying to figure out the 40 meter band. i know generals have more privileges than techs but every chart i look at shows different things and i cant figure out if im reading it right. like theres the FCC allocation and then theres the ARRL band plan and they dont always match up? or am i missing something
specifically i keep seeing people say dont operate too close to the band edge and i get that in theory but what does that actually mean in practice. like if 7.125 is supposedly where general phone starts, can i just tune to 7.125 and start calling or is there some buffer i should leave. someone at my club said something about your signal having width and that you need to account for that but i wasnt totally sure what he meant
also is 40m phone generally LSB down there? i think i know the answer but want to make sure before i make an embarrassing mistake on the air

I just passed mine like two months ago. the theory was intimidating but half of those questions if you just know the formulas you can calculate the answer right there in the exam, you dont even have to memorize. the oscillator and amplifier stability stuff was the hardest for me personally. but honestly once you sit down and take a few practice exams on hamstudy or whatever it starts feeling less impossible pretty quick
just go for it, worst case you fail and take it again, the examiners dont care

had almost this exact thing happen on mine after i accidentally keyed into a open connector for a second. one of the RD15HVF1 finals had gone soft — not dead, just... weak. the other one was still pulling its weight so the radio kept functioning but output was way down. you can sometimes catch it by measuring drain current on each device separately but that means getting into the PA board which is a bit of a project on the 7300.
before you go that far though, check the PA bias trimmer. theres a known thing where those can drift, especially on units that ran hot. Icom has a service bulletin floating around on it i think, might be worth digging up. if bias is way off it'll look exactly like what you're describing. ALC pegged because the radio is trying to compensate and just can't get there.

Not a dumb question at all, honestly this stuff confused me for the first year or two as well. So the short version is they're all separate awards run by different organizations and you track them separately, though the contacts can overlap — meaning one QSO with Japan could count toward DXCC, WAZ, and WAS doesn't really apply there since that's just the 50 US states but you get the idea.
DXCC is the big one most people chase first, that's 100 confirmed countries basically (they call them entities which is a whole other rabbit hole). WAZ is Worked All Zones, there are 40 CQ zones around the world and you need one contact confirmed from each. WAS is just the 50 states, which sounds easy but Alaska and Hawaii will chase you in your sleep.
For confirmation LoTW is by far the easiest path now, a lot of DX stations upload there and when both sides confirm the QSO it counts. Paper QSL cards still work and some awards actually require them for certain band endorsements or rare entities, but for getting started just get on LoTW and make sure the stations you're working are uploading there too. Your Japan contact is almost certainly a valid DXCC entity so log it carefully and check if they're on LoTW.

timing is everything honestly. ive worked some pretty rare stuff with 100w and a wire antenna just because i figured out the op's pattern before the guys running kilowatts did. there was one memorable VP8 operation where the op was clearly working by number and half the pileup didnt notice for like 20 minutes, so i just waited until he was on my number and got through pretty clean.
the partial call thing is interesting too — on cw especially if the op comes back with just a partial like "3T" you need to resist the urge to immediately blast your full call back. just send the missing portion once, clearly, and let him complete the qso. i see people send their full 6x6 call back at 30wpm in a panic and it just buries everything. also on ssb i've had good luck with sending just my suffix when the op is clearly fishing around, gets you to stand out if everyone else is sending full calls.
the split listening part is something a lot of newer ops dont practice enough. knowing where in the split window the op is actually pulling calls from takes a few minutes to figure out each time. some expeditions publish their listening range but honestly just listening for a few qsos before you start calling saves a lot of wasted effort.

Both solid choices! For newcomers reading this - either radio will get you on the air and making contacts. Don't get paralyzed by analysis. The best QRP rig is the one you actually take to the field and use. 73!

yeah what he said about the sidebands is the main thing. i learned this the hard way when somebody came back to me and said i was bleeding over into some weird digital segment. was embarrassing. now i just mentally subtract a few kHz from whatever the edge is and call it good.
also worth noting that 40m is kind of a weird band internationally — the ITU regions have different allocations so if youre working DX sometimes the other station is operating perfectly legally on their end but theyre outside your allowed range. just something to be aware of, not really a problem for stateside stuff

had almost this exact thing happen on mine after i accidentally keyed into a open connector for a second. one of the RD15HVF1 finals had gone soft — not dead, just... weak. the other one was still pulling its weight so the radio kept functioning but output was way down. you can sometimes catch it by measuring drain current on each device separately but that means getting into the PA board which is a bit of a project on the 7300.
before you go that far though, check the PA bias trimmer. theres a known thing where those can drift, especially on units that ran hot. Icom has a service bulletin floating around on it i think, might be worth digging up. if bias is way off it'll look exactly like what you're describing. ALC pegged because the radio is trying to compensate and just can't get there.

yeah the mars mod is pretty harmless on those radios. i did mine like day two of owning it, old habit from the 706 days where you kind of just did it automatically. fan mod sounds interesting, my shack gets warm in summer and i always wondered if the stock cooling was really adequate for heavy digital use. might look into that noctua option.

so ive been going back and forth on this for like two weeks now and i just need someone to tell me im overthinking it. i have a decent backyard, maybe 80 feet end to end, and im trying to decide between throwing up a simple 40m dipole or getting one of those trapped verticals. right now im using a random wire with a tuner and it works but the noise floor on receive is just terrible, like S7 on a quiet night which i know is partly the location (suburbs, lots of switching power supplies nearby) but i feel like a better antenna would help.
the dipole seems like the obvious choice because i have the space and they're cheap to build, but my only decent support is an oak tree on one end and the other end would have to come down pretty low, maybe 20 feet at the peak and like 8 feet on the far end. so its not gonna be a nice flat dipole, more like an inverted V or even worse. the vertical would go in the middle of the yard and id have room for maybe 8 radials if i bury them which i know isnt ideal but its what i have.
mostly doing SSB and some digital, not really chasing DX hard, just want reliable contacts on 40 and maybe 80 if i can get the vertical to load up on 80 with the tuner. anyone been through this same debate